Of 1,200 women killed this year, 98 were raped

Islamabad: The country has laws to protect women from violence, but they appear of little help to the fair sex, whose vulnerability to excesses by men in the male-dominated society has refused to recede.

Enough to confirm this view are the figures compiled by ‘The Madadgaar Helpline’, which reports the killing of 1,195 women countrywide over the last 11 months. Ironically, 98 of these women were killed after being raped.

‘The Madadgaar Helpline’, the country’s first helpline for women and children, compiled the numbers after examining reports, which appeared in the mainstream media.

According to the statistics, 321 women were raped and 194 gang raped between January and November 2010, while 1,091 were tortured, 126 burnt, 383 kidnapped and 316 tortured by police. A total of 491 women committed suicide during the said period.

The data also said that a total of 4,870 cases of violence against women were registered by police in the country during the last 11 months and thus, taking the total number of such cases reported since the year 2000 to 79,909.

Of the violence against women cases reported this year so far, over 2,400 were reported in the Punjab, 1,070 in Sindh, 998 in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and 313 in Balochistan. The number of cases was comparatively less in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan reportedly due to a strong tribal culture and lack of access to the media.

Zia Awan, who is Madadgaar’s project coordinator, said the growing cases of violence against women was a blemish on the face of society and seriously hampered the efforts for women empowerment and gender equality in the country.

He said like other human rights activists, he was saddened to see there was no parts of the country where violence against women were not reported. “This should be a wake-up call for the government,Â” he said.
Source: The News
Date:11/27/2010